Like many of her post-conceptualist peers, Uta Barth is concerned with exploring and critiquing the ideological deceits of mediated information. This has become a somewhat stale practice in recent years. Raised on Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message,” nurtured by Jean Baudrillard’s “procession of simulacra,” and primed by feminist rereadings of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, many artists have come to accept deconstructive readings of all language as mediated chains of deferred meaning and desire. Earnest warnings of the crisis of representation through the reallegorization of

Fred Hoffman Gallery

In delicate and menacing fashion, Sophie Calle explores questions of identity. This show consists of seven simple yet lengthy photo/text works produced by the French artist between 1979 and 1988. In Les Dormeurs (The sleepers, 1979), Calle set up an eight-day schedule, during which time a different person occupied her bed every eight hours. After each segment, the person was asked to leave, no exceptions, so the next sleeper could enter. She sat in a chair and observed her subjects, photographing them, establishing contact with minimal conversation, and taking notes. She also fed her subjects